“ad fontes!”
UK, 1797—strength or confidence gained from drinking alcohol—alludes to the drinking habits ascribed to the Dutch—one of the phrases in which ‘Dutch’ is used derogatorily, largely because of the enmity between the English and the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries
Read MoreU.S., 1876—‘bulldozers’: members or supporters of the Democratic Party who used threats and acts of violence in order to prevent Afro-Americans from voting for Republican candidates
Read MoreUSA, 1956—acronym from ‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’—‘Wasp’, or ‘WASP’: a person who belongs to, or is thought of, as being part of a white, upper middle-class, northern European, Protestant group that dominates economic, political and cultural activity in the USA
Read MoreOf American-English origin, ‘bag lady’, or ‘shopping-bag lady’, denotes a homeless woman, often elderly, who carries her possessions in shopping bags. The earliest instance that I have found is from The Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) of 19th June 1971.
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some characteristic slang creations of the British, U.S. and French soldiers during World War One, as recorded in ‘Trench Talk’, published in Everybody’s Magazine (New York) of January 1918
Read MoreFrom the 17th century onwards, Grub Street, in Moorgate, London, was inhabited by literary hacks.
Read MoreThe phrase ‘below the salt’ originated in the social differentiations materialised by the former custom of placing a large saltcellar in the middle of a dining table.
Read More‘Welsh’: used disparagingly by the English to denote inferior things; ‘rabbit’: common dishes were humorously called by the names of superior ones
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originally, at Cambridge University: oversized wooden spoon given to the candidate coming last in the mathematical tripos (BA-degree final honours examination)
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from Speed the Plough (1798), by Thomas Morton; Dame Ashfield is constantly fearing to give occasion for the sneers of Mrs Grundy, her unseen neighbour
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